Justin TRudeau

There’s a backlash against sex education in ‘Feminist Canada’
Canada appears progressive on the world stage. But under pressure from the Christian right, Ontario’s premier scrapped modern sex education.

Nandini Archer
13 February 2019

The recent decision in the Canadian province of Ontario, to scrap its modern sex education curriculum, is “a significant retrogressive step” and “part of the backlash” against sexual and reproductive rights, said Sandeep Prasad, executive director of the NGO Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.

Last year, the 2015 sex education curriculum for pre-teens, which addressed issues from consent to LGBT rights, was replaced with that from 1998. The provincial government also introduced a hotline – dubbed the “snitch line” by critics – for parents to report on teachers who continue to teach these topics.

Displaced Rohingya women need access to abortion, not just food and shelter
Thousands of Rohingya women and girls have been systematically raped by Myanmar's military

Anu Kumar and Sandeep Prasad
for CBC News
Posted: Sep 29, 2018

Rape is still being used as an instrument of war. Right now. Before our very eyes.

We know that since August 2017, thousands of Rohingya women and girls have been systematically raped by Myanmar military as a way to humiliate, terrify and dominate the Rohingya communities. In fact, Canadian parliamentarians recently unanimously voted to declare the systemic rape and killing of Rohingya an act of genocide.

How Canada’s growing anti-abortion movement plans to swing the next federal election
Anti-abortion lobbyists cheered Ontario’s election as evidence of success. Next up: an ambitious strategy for 2019.

Anne Kingston
Sep 12, 2018

When Doug Ford, newly minted as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, took the stage at the party’s leadership convention last March, he conspicuously thanked one person standing behind him: Tanya Granic Allen, an outspoken social conservative and leadership hopeful. Ford spoke of his intent “to return our province to where it belongs” before making a show of shaking Granic Allen’s hand. It was a small gesture with big import that would have been missed by many: Ford’s debt to “socons” and, speciﬁcally, the anti-abortion lobby that enabled his win.

Granic Allen was the top choice of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), a national group that works to nominate and elect candidates who oppose abortion at all levels of government, CLC vice-president Jeff Gunnarson tells Maclean’s.

Why, unlike some people, Canadians don’t lose their minds over Supreme Court appointments
Canada's top court is way less politicized than in the United States, and it's not just because our Constitution is only 36 years old

Tristin Hopper
Updated: July 9, 2018

The United States is currently mired in political chaos following the announcement that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will be retiring. It’s a bizarre spectacle from Canada, where new Supreme Court appointments are barely noticed. While U.S. Supreme Court justices are household names, most Canadians cannot name a single sitting member of their highest court (and Beverley McLachlin doesn’t count anymore; she just retired). So what gives? The National Post called up some very smart law experts to figure out why Canada’s Supreme Court isn’t the partisan hockey puck it is down south.

Humanitarian groups are lauding the federal government’s commitment to initiatives abroad that focus on sexual reproductive health services — noting it as a marked change from the previous government that excluded those services.

“I just want to commend the government of Canada for their incredible leadership in keeping gender equity and sexual reproductive rights at the forefront of [its] feminist foreign policy and core part of all the humanitarian aid and support,” said Christina Wegs of CARE International and the lead on sexual and reproductive health and rights.

This Virtual Reality Flick Shows What It’s Like to Have an Unwanted Pregnancy
A Polish-Canadian filmmaker wants to demonstrate the difference between having an opinion on abortion and *actually* experiencing an unwanted pregnancy

Mar 16, 2018
Lindsay Pinter

Imagine waking up in a pregnant body that isn’t yours—and then being faced with a difficult decision about whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. It sounds like the premise of a sci-fi flick, but it’s actually the opening moments of a new virtual reality documentary currently in the works.

The Choice lets viewers step into the consciousness of a pregnant woman who is debating whether or not she should have an abortion. With the help of special VR goggles, viewers can actually look down to see the simulation of a slight computer-generated bump where their stomach should be, giving the appearance that they themselves are pregnant.

The Canada Summer Jobs kerfuffle: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Joyce Arthur
February 2, 2018

Should taxpayers fund summer jobs for youth where they will be trained to challenge and oppose the Charter rights of others? Of course not, but it's been going on under our noses for years. Anti-choice groups have been milking the Canada Summer Jobs fund to the tune of $1.7 million since 2010.

The story began in April 2017, when the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) reported that many anti-choice groups had been getting Canada Summer Jobs funding for years -- primarily "crisis pregnancy centres" that dissuade women from abortion, but also some political groups, including Campaign Life Coalition, LifeSiteNews, and Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform (CCBR). The latter group is infamous for its public display of gory signs showing alleged aborted fetuses and delivering similar graphic flyers to residences.

Eighty pro-choice and human rights groups including Oxfam Canada have signed an open letter applauding the government’s move to require all groups seeking funding through the Canada Summer Jobs program to sign an attestation stating they support Canadian constitutional rights as well as the right to reproductive choice.

Announced last month following a report by Global News, the attestation all groups seeking federal funding through the program are required to sign states that both the organizational mandate and duties of the job that will be funded through the grants respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as other rights.

WASHINGTON — In what’s almost certainly a first in the lengthy history of bilateral relations between the countries, Canada’s summer-jobs program has become the object of criticism from America’s right wing.

The reason is abortion.

A former Trump White House adviser, several news organizations and the president’s favourite Fox News morning show have all dumped on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s explanation for why pro-life groups should be excluded from $220 million in federal jobs grants.